What Is Project Control?

What do you think of when you hear “project control”? Micromanager? Confrontation? Inflexible? Military-style leadership? Theory X management? Fortunately, none of these terms accurately describe project control. Project control consists of the information systems and the management procedures that allow us to answer questions such as

• Are we on track?

• Are we on budget?

• Are we on schedule?

• Are we delivering what we said we would?

• Are we meeting quality and performance standards?

• Are we meeting stakeholder expectations?

• What have we accomplished?

• Will the project objectives be met?

• What deviations/variances exist?

• What corrective actions are we taking?

• What caused these variances?

• What risks are we monitoring?

• What issues do we need to resolve?

• What lessons have we learned?